


Roman Holiday

by thedevilchicken



Category: Actor RPF
Genre: Background Het, Frenemies, M/M, Past Relationship(s), So Wrong It's Right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-09
Updated: 2005-12-09
Packaged: 2018-04-05 08:48:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4173528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's been calling him Tyler for three days now, mostly because it pisses him off to high heaven but also, maybe, because he's half sure he's only real in his head. No actual person could be that obnoxious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roman Holiday

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on Livejournal on 9 December 2005.

He's been calling him Tyler for three days now, mostly because it pisses him off to high heaven but also, maybe, because he's half sure he's only real in his head. No actual person could be that obnoxious.

What gets him is he shouldn't even _be_ here. He's supposed to be back in the States showing everyone that he's not suffering some sort of post-Bennifer brain-brokenness when all he really wants to do is crawl into a small hole with a truly vast quantity of alcohol and never show his face again. But here he is. He promised Matt, in what he can only assume was a fit of absolutely extraordinary fucking drunkenness, that he'd go visit him in Rome. So, here he is. That's that.

It was raining when he got there but he'd had just enough vodka from the too-small miniatures served on the plane from New York to feel ready to face the world, whatever the weather. Matt had said he'd pick him up but called while Ben was sitting in the bar at JFK to say he'd be stuck on set filming all day and he'd just have to meet him in the bar later on instead. He gave him the address over the crackling international phone line, spelling out the unfamiliar Italian, repeating it patiently when Ben asked him to because it seemed bourbon did little for his hand-eye coordination. Then he almost thought he'd left it there in the airport bar, scrawled on a paper napkin in neon pink magic marker because that's all the bartender had when he asked, but apparently he'd stuffed it into his pocket where it crumpled magnificently and though he couldn't tell what the fucking fuck it actually _said _once he got there, the taxi driver apparently understood. And he arrived at the bar only half an hour late. For him, that was sort of impressive.__

__Brad's was the first familiar face that he saw. Sadly, though by God he did look, his was the _only_ familiar face he saw. _ _

__"Ben," Brad said, with a smirk._ _

__"Brad," Ben replied, with a smirk to match._ _

__Then they had a drink together. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Brad, the fucking asshole, bought him a Coke._ _

__They were talking in a sort of mocking, cursory manner when the others turned up - the others being George, who clapped him on the back hard enough to make him spit his drink all over the table, Casey, who gave him a rather huge, obnoxious kiss on the forehead before disappearing to the bar with Scott Caan, and various and sundry members of the cast and crew. Matt was out doing some unspecified thing with Julia and Catherine, which did _not_ bode well, so there Ben was at a table with Brad and George and Steven Soderbergh, George consistently and insistently picking up the tab for all of them until something like midnight when they all retreated to the hotel. Matt still hadn't turned up. Casey had disappeared, which was just like him. George grinned hugely, swayed a little, and invited him up to his suite with half of everyone else. So he went. And spent the next three hours stealing Brad's drinks. _ _

__The short explanation of the events that followed thereafter is simply this: almost everyone filtered out in a gradual trickle the closer it came to 3am, George started telling tales about _Batman & Robin_ to try to make Ben feel better about the travesty that was Gigli, not that he'd actually asked him to, and by the time Matt actually showed, Ben was sitting on Brad's lap. He looked up from his awkward perch - he was _far_ too big to be doing this but so far they'd both found it terribly amusing, took another sip of Brad's scotch and grinned rather drunkenly across the room. He guesses it wasn't pretty because Matt didn't look at all impressed. And he guesses a whole evening out with Julia and Catherine probably hadn't helped. _ _

__He remembers saying something though he's not overly sure _what_ he said, does remember it sounding so hopelessly slurred that George cracked the fuck up and Brad smirked at him as he took back his drink, his arm around Ben's waist the only thing keeping him from flopping fish-like to the floor. Somewhat predictably, Matt got pissed and pitched a hissy-fit that actually included the delightful acronym 'BFF' (at that point Ben felt roughly like he was stuck in an episode of South Park) and ended with Matt storming the fuck out of the suite. 3am with no functional Italian beyond 'mi chiamo Ben' - not _such_ a necessity in central Rome when your name's Ben Affleck - he just invited himself to stay with Brad. Because somehow that made perfect sense. _ _

__They helped a rather inebriated George into his bedroom, left despite his protests and then walked down the hall to Brad's suite, not actually talking but still side by side, Ben purposely pulled up to his full height and Brad pretending not to notice how much taller Ben was than him. They went inside and six days later they're still sharing that damn room, Brad bitching about how long Ben spends in the shower and Ben muttering under his breath every time he's saddled with tipping the guy from room service simply because Brad always seems to disappear in the moment just before that knock at the door._ _

__He's been sightseeing while they're out filming. That's actually one reason he agreed to go out there, he thinks, or he'd like to think it is; it's not that he's never seen Rome but he's never really _seen_ it, not so much as he's been driven through it on his way to some interview or another. So he spends his days in a cap and sunglasses, glued to his city guide and taking the occasional photograph, signing the occasional autograph. It's good for him, maybe because he's somehow managing to elude the paparazzi - he finds that amusing since he's currently in the country that spawned the term - and then there's the food and the wine and the way the sun hits the buildings in the afternoon... before he heads back to the bar and attempts to talk to Matt, night after night. _ _

__The problem is, he understands why Matt's pissed: it's because he knows what Ben gets up to with Brad. Still, there are only so many times and so many ways he can explain how he doesn't feel like Matt has a right to be pissed that he's fucking Brad, not when _he_ was the one that called it off between them _that_ way, saying something about risks and careers and friendships that on a clear day Ben might admit he understands. But Matt didn't have the right to be pissed when Ben actually answered the question, told him that as far as he and Brad were concerned, fucking hating each other didn't exactly preclude them fucking _fucking_ each other. And he seriously drew the line at Matt asking so damn prissily for the details, who does what to whom and how, does he like Brad's cock up his ass? He almost said yeah, actually, he just _loves_ it when Brad bends him over the table, and Brad's pretty fucking keen on it, too... but in the end he just told him to grow the fuck up instead. _ _

__Now they stick to less contentious issues. It brings a lot less grief, reminds him why he actually went out there in the first place, the reason that has nothing to do with sightseeing and dodging rabid American paparazzi. Matt's still his best friend, no matter how much of a fucking bastard he can be at times, and they can still talk about just about anything. They chat at the bar, catch up, sometimes pry Casey away from his friends and it's pretty much just like old times, just in a new location. The only problem is that Ben's still spending his nights in Brad's room, ordering strawberry ice cream and taking his sweet, ludicrous time licking it off him just to get a reaction while the bastard tries to pretend he's reading his scenes for the next day. And while it's not exactly common knowledge, it's still enough to be colouring every single fucking conversation he has with Matt; at some point there'll be a reference in some varying shade of oblique, from the kind where he's not sure if that's really what he's saying or if he's just taking it the wrong way, right through to the blatant, outright questions._ _

__He prefers the questions, even when he can't answer them: "Why are you doing this?" "Is it really worth the risk?" "How the fuck did you two even _meet_?”_ _

__But the last question, at least, he can answer. Because he remembers that perfectly._ _

__***_ _

__He remembers how they met, that day in LA while Gwyn was away and he'd foolishly agreed to dog-sit. Which, incidentally, also mean apartment-sitting simply because Gwyn didn't want her poor puppy exposed to Ben's place and he honestly couldn't blame her, not considering how his idea of cleaning was basically heaping all the mostly-empty pizza boxes and beer bottles into a garbage bag maybe once a week, on trash day. Which quite honestly explained why they spent the vast, overwhelming majority of their time anywhere _but_ his place. _ _

__So, he was staying at Gwyn's place for a couple of weeks, under strict orders to use the kitchen only to reheat pizza and cool beer as Gwyn had long since abandoned her somewhat vain attempts to teach him to cook without coming within two short steps of ending his life in an impressive ball of flame. And he already knew that Brad was coming over that Tuesday morning because there was a little calendar/itinerary stuck to the refrigerator door that told him so: _Brad, 1pm, he will be late. Borrowing good china to impress present gf's parents. Box in hall closet, marked BRAD. Threaten unpleasant reprisal for every breakage_. So he sat in Gwyn's lounge playing with Holden - the cute black labrador who actually spent most of his life asleep - grumbling as 1pm came and went. He'd actually dozed off in front of one of Gwyn's old videos by 1:54pm, when the doorbell actually, finally, rang. _ _

__"Brad," he said as he stood in the doorway, mid-yawn, only one eye open, covering his mouth with one hand and ruffling his already rumpled hair with the other._ _

__"Ben," Brad replied. And if he was surprised at who'd answered the door, he didn't show it._ _

__They just looked at each other for a long moment after that, not weighing each other up so much as just... looking. Indifferent. Ben remembered something Matt once said in an interview about how he'd never be stunning the way Brad was and now there the guy was, standing on Gwyn's doorstep in baggy jeans that probably cost about fifty times what Ben's had, all long blond hair and a vaguely amused sneer that Ben soon realised was his default setting._ _

__"Going to invite me in?" Brad asked and Ben shrugged, stepped aside; Brad walked in curiously like he owned the place and Ben realised later that that was also a Brad default. He wandered through to the kitchen and Ben followed, watched him open the fridge and stand there with the door open, basking in the cool air as he took a couple of excessively large swigs from a bottle of OJ that Ben had only bought that morning. Somehow he wasn't at all surprised._ _

__"Plates are in the hall closet and try not to drink me out of fucking juice, okay? That's mine, not Gwyn's."_ _

__Brad only paused for a second, eyeing the bottle appreciatively before taking another healthy swig, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand._ _

__"S'good," he said, and put the bottle down on the counter next to the refrigerator. When he left the room again, after giving it a ridiculously long once-over almost like he hadn't practically lived there for a time, he left that bottle right where it was, uncapped and on the counter. Ben found out later he was lucky that he'd even bothered to close the refrigerator door._ _

__That was the first time they met and the second wasn't much better; he turned up again, unannounced, two days later. Ben had only just got back from the store when Brad rang the doorbell and he returned to putting away the groceries, such as they were, after he'd let him in - he glared as Brad reached for the OJ and told him not to bother but he did it anyway, leaving Gwyn's good china perched precariously on the edge of the cabinet. He proceeded to bitch about Ben's poor choice of juice while he swigged from the bottle and Ben finished with the food. Then he followed him through to the lounge and flopped down into an armchair to play with the terribly affectionate dog - the dog fucking _loved_ Brad - while Ben flicked on the television. He was there for forty-five minutes and it didn't really occur to Ben to throw him out. He guesses that was his mistake. _ _

__He kept coming back. He had no logical reason to be there, but he kept coming back. Ben started putting sticky labels with his name on them on his juice in the fridge but Brad drank it anyway and on the fifth day Ben caved and bought two bottles, gave Brad his own goddamn sticky label. The bastard drank Ben's anyway, with his feet up on Gwyn's coffee table while they watched cartoons and bitched about the weather, bitched about each other, tore into each other's movies something vicious and pointedly _didn’t_ come to any sort of understanding about a single fucking thing. Brad was abrasive but aggressively laid back; Ben spent his afternoons in a near-constant state of irritation and a kind of violent good humour. Offending each other became routine. _ _

__On the seventh day, Brad brought beer. He set it down at his end of the table and quite pointedly _didn’t_ offer one to Ben, so he took one anyway. They exchanged glares for a moment then Brad bitched about the Red Sox and Ben was instantly ready to strangle him. But he didn't, obviously, and Brad didn't leave for another hour and a half. _ _

__Ben started to wonder if Brad actually had a life of his own and he asked him just that on the eighth day. Brad smirked and told him to mind his own fucking business, then left his beer half drunk and went out. He came back fifteen minutes later and dropped a gossip magazine into Ben's lap - Brad was on the cover. He guessed that answered his question. And just because he knew Brad would fucking hate it, he sat there and read every last little article in that magazine, smiling to himself like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Then he rolled it up and leaned over, thwapped Brad on the arm as he smiled amiably. Brad took it back and proceeded to draw beards and eye-patches on various pictures of Courtney Cox for about half an hour while Ben stoically _didn’t_ find it amusing. _ _

__Day nine came and went with no visit and Ben found himself wondering where the fuck he was, why exactly the jackass hadn't turned up. And then he wondered why the fuck it even mattered and spent most of the night and part of the morning in a stupidly expensive bar with Bruce Willis and Owen Wilson like that was a part of most sensible, sane people's lives. He woke the next afternoon, really fucking hung over, to the distinctly unmelodious sound of Brad's own inimitable knocking on the door._ _

__"You look like hell," Brad said cheerfully as he sauntered past a mostly-clothed Ben and grabbed his - Ben's - orange juice from the kitchen. "Late night?"_ _

__"Early fucking morning," Ben muttered, not bothering to follow him, going to grab his jeans from the bedroom, pulling them on and buttoning them as he came back into the lounge. Brad smirked at him from across the room, orange juice in hand. The label had Ben's name on it. Of course it had._ _

__"I leave you alone for one day and look at you, Affleck," he said, leaning against the wall. He didn't volunteer any information about where he'd been and Ben didn't ask. "And you drink too fucking much."_ _

__Ben paused for a second, debating the pros and cons of admitting that he knew that already, eventually settling for: "Well, at least I buy my own fucking OJ, Bradley. Besides, what the fuck are you even _doing_ here?"_ _

__"Enjoying your good company, _Benjamin_. Keeping you company while your girlfriend's out of the country." He took another sip straight from the bottle, smiled oh-so-sweetly. "Drinking your fucking orange juice. Pissing you off. Take your pick."_ _

__"That's not a serious answer."_ _

__A pause, then he capped the bottle and put it down on the bookcase next to him, where he proceeded to leave it instead of taking it back to the kitchen. By then, Ben didn't actually expect anything else. "It wasn't a serious question."_ _

__"Sure it was, I'm absolutely goddamn intrigued." He crossed his arms over his chest, mostly just for lack of anything else to do with them that wasn't taunt-worthy gesticulation. "What keeps you coming back day after day? Really, I'm fascinated."_ _

__"I don't know." A smirk, a shrug. "Maybe I just want to fuck your girlfriend."_ _

__"Brad, you already _have_ fucked my girlfriend."_ _

__"Then maybe I'm trying to find out why the hell she's fucking _you_.”_ _

__Ben shrugged. "I could come up with a few reasons for you."_ _

__"I'm sure. I just wonder if _she_ can."_ _

__"Probably primarily because I'm not you."_ _

__Brad tilted his head, slipping his hands into his pockets as he leaned there, annoyingly casual. "We still talk. She's still into me, y'know... maybe I should pay her a visit, if you know what I mean. Remind her what she's been missing." And then he sort of frown-smiled, eyed Ben closely. "I can't believe she's with you. No way you're good enough for her."_ _

__Ben almost laughed at that. "And you are?"_ _

__"Well, yeah."_ _

__He wasn't really pissed off at that, at any of it, but he felt like he should be. Really, he was just sort of irritated, no more than usual, that same low-level annoyance that the guy brought out in him all the damn time. But that "well, _duh_ “ tone was _supposed_ to get him riled, really _should_ have, he guessed. So he pushed him up against the wall. And Brad just smirked. They looked at each other, Ben wondering vaguely what the fucking fuck he was doing, and Brad brought up his knee; Ben remembers half-cringing like he expected that knee in the groin but he got his thigh instead, rubbing up against the crotch of his jeans. That's just about when Ben realised how fucked up this actually was, in that moment while he was pressing his girlfriend's ex to a wall, hands flat to his shoulders, apparently getting harder by the second because even the fucking irritation couldn't change the fact that he hadn't gotten any in nearly three weeks. _ _

__They had the decency to actually fuck at Ben's place, and that was really fucking weird. Ben drove, after a similarly weird and brief conversation wherein it was unanimously decided that fucking at Gwyn's place was just downright tacky; Ben wondered later why neither of them questioned the fact, the _fact_ , that they were going to do it, just fought over who got to drive. Brad slid the passenger seat right back and put one foot up against the dash and Ben didn't bother to tell him to put it down despite the fact that he could barely drive for how it distracted him. But he made a point of _not_ telling him. They didn't talk at all, in fact - Brad fiddled with the radio and hummed along badly with some Guns 'n' Roses, then they pulled into the driveway and Brad promptly shut the fuck up. That was the only sign he gave that he wasn't 100% at ease with the situation, much to Ben's annoyance. He half suspects the whole thing was more about them finding out which one of them would blink first, a bizarre game of chicken that had started the moment Brad stepped into Gwyn's place that first day and ended in Ben's bedroom, half-naked and thrusting as Brad smirked _again_ and took it, never quite moaning because that wouldn’t be cool, long hair sticking to his slick skin. _ _

__They lay there after, still semi-clothed and neither of them bothering to redress or undress the whole way. It was the single weirdest post-coital conversation of Ben's life either before or after, about the relative merits of ceiling fans and air conditioning and whether it was cold in Cambridge that time of year._ _

__And that was how it went from then on, the occasional incongruous conversation punctuating the sex that punctuated the hours of vague annoyance. It turned out that Brad's place was just as messy if not messier than Ben's - they fucked on the couch one afternoon and Ben put his hand in three-day-old Chinese takeout. They did it in Ben's shower, covered in bodywash and Ben cursed a lot, more than usual, because he somehow got shampoo in his eyes from Brad's hair. They tried it in Brad's bathtub, found it was nowhere even _close_ to fitting the two of them though that didn't prevent them from fucking at an awkward angle that left Brad complaining for hours while Ben repeatedly just told him to shut the fuck up and drink his fucking beer. He smoked his pot instead and mellowed out impressively; Ben stuck to his cigarettes and alcohol and later on Brad gave him the laziest blowjob he'd ever had the... he couldn't quite bring himself to call it misfortune, to experience. He passed out around 3am with Brad's head on his thigh and woke up seven hours later sprawled on the couch with his arms around Brad's waist. He still counts it among the top ten most disturbing occurrences of his life, and there've honestly been a few. _ _

__Now here they are, four years later, maybe five. Rome. He's been calling him Tyler for the last three days. That doesn't seem strange at all._ _

__***_ _

__There's a poker game goes on in Brad's suite every night, some of the cast and crew with drinks and, amusingly, poker chips salvaged from the set of the last Ocean's. They let Ben play for a couple of nights and he cleaned them out, _repeatedly_ \- then someone mentioned the fact that they'd seen him on Celebrity Poker or some such reality crap and that effectively got him ejected from the game, like a little celebrity poker tournament or two made him some kind of a hustler. So now he deals or he skulks about town; tonight he's been skulking. _ _

__He comes in from a club around two, meets George in the hallway as he's leaving the game and they stop for at least ten minutes, just chatting - apparently they both have a gift for absolutely pointless conversation because they never seem to have a problem filling time, even if they never really say anything. Really, all Ben's interested in is the fact that George has just come from Brad's suite, and he's only interested because George is always just about the last to leave; this probably means that he'll get there just in time for the last hand of the evening and won't have to hammer on the door for Brad to let him in, half-naked and glaring. He's got this really fucking distracting habit of walking around the place in just a tight, camouflage-green muscle shirt and absolutely _nothing_ else; Ben's tried to tease him about it but Brad apparently could not care less, not even when Ben casually insults his size. In fact, maybe _especially_ then, because he has this bizarre, infuriating way of turning it into something about how Ben can't stop staring at his cock - infuriating mostly because it's partly true, but what he's supposed to do besides stare when he's got it on display like that is beyond him. Brad just smirks when he asks, as if that means he's won. Really, four fifths of the time that they're in the same room is just exasperating. _ _

__The door's open when he finally comes to the room; this isn't a new thing, with all the people there are coming in and out all night, and apparently they all trust hotel security to keep the majority of non-cast weirdos out. Ben's not sure that's wise and that's exactly the thought he's got in his head as he's walking in, but not for long because apparently the only two people left in there are Brad and Matt, sitting there at the table with the chips and a huge collection of people's empty glasses, a few packs of cards that Ben's been wondering for a few nights who they send out to buy. They're talking. They actually look quite amused. And it doesn't take long for him, loitering in the doorway while they apparently don't notice him, to realise exactly what they're talking about._ _

__"I still just don't get it," Matt's saying. "I was under the general impression that you hated him."_ _

__Brad shrugs as he takes a sip of his drink, doesn't answer until he sets it back down on the table. "Ben?" He shakes his head. "I don't hate him. I think he's a jackass and he's too old to change, but I don't _hate_ him." _ _

__Which is, apparently, Ben's cue to close the door as noisily as he can and saunter into the room, hands clasped to his chest, the expression on his face as wounded as he can make it when he's this sincerely entertained. "Be still my fucking heart," he says. Matt smiles wryly and rolls his eyes; Brad just chuckles._ _

__He crosses the room and the first thing he does is pat Matt on the shoulder; he flinches and even though it's barely perceptible, even though he doesn't mean to and Ben really does understand, Brad shakes his head and Ben shrugs. And the second thing he does: Ben wraps an arm around Brad's shoulders, leans down but only part of the way because Brad meets him in the kiss. It's predictably rough, Brad tugging at the lapels of Ben's jacket, but it's also brief, just a few seconds before they pull back. Ben smirks at Brad; Brad sucks on his own lower lip in a weirdly satisfied manner and pats Ben pseudo-affectionately on the cheek. And Matt leaves. He just shakes his head, gets up, and leaves._ _

__Anyone else would tell him to go after Matt but Brad doesn't say anything about it, just grabs two Cokes from the bar, waves him to a seat at the table and proceeds to tell him everything he's never wanted to know about Ocean's Twelve. They play a couple of pointless hands of poker and Ben beats him soundly, which doesn't exactly come as a surprise to either of them. Ben eyes him over his cards, understanding exactly what he's doing. And he's actually grateful, in that slightly perverse way in that he won't say it and Brad won't ask him to._ _

__"How about you pretend like you like me tonight?" Ben says, during a lull in conversation. Or where the lull would've been if there'd _been_ a conversation, not just Brad's Movie Monologue. He sits forward a little, resting his head on one hand. That's the point when he realises he's only half kidding. _ _

__Brad tilts his head and looks at him over the table. He smiles as he shakes his head, sits back, runs his hand over his short hair. "I _do_ like you," he says, and Ben half-smiles back. It's not quite a lie, but it's nothing like the truth. There's no real way to explain what exactly that is._ _

__Then Brad stands, glass dangling from his hand; he downs it like it's whiskey and not Diet Coke he poured from a can. When he leans down to kiss him, he tastes of it. Then he pulls back, puts down the glass and walks away as Ben starts to protest in what's probably a sarcastic tone._ _

__"Just shut the fuck up and come to bed, would you?" he says, looking back over his shoulder. It's just a glance, just for a second. And it's not a request._ _

__Ben raises his eyebrows for a moment, then he follows. Brad's already undressing as he walks into the room and Ben's trying not to remember the last time he saw him before this, the time before that; he's trying not to remember that Brad called him after Gwyn left him, pissed him off in the rudest, most abrupt and infuriatingly fucking cheerful way possible, then hung up. Ben glared at the phone like the innocent inanimate object was somehow to blame for Brad's persistent obnoxiousness, but in the end he was forced to confront the reality that Brad was just _that_ much of an asshole. Call it an accident of nature, if you will. But he was too pissed off to drink for the rest of the day. It should've clicked then, but it hadn't._ _

__He steps into the bedroom, trying not to remember how he stopped by a couple of days later, brought beer but drank Ben's, ate all the Chinese takeout himself, eventually yanked Ben to his feet and into the bedroom, fucked him for the first time and definitely not the last. He hung around for the rest of the day, Ben waiting for a taunting - probably about the sex - that just never came. Brad invited himself to stay over, slept in his bed, blew him before they went to sleep and drank all his coffee before he left in the morning. More like afternoon. Matt laughed when he told him later that day, a cross-country phone call on a bad line that did nothing to conceal his amusement. Ben wasn't surprised a couple of years later when Matt told him he and Brad were friends. He could already see how they'd get along pretty damn well._ _

__The fact is, they're still friends, just as Ben and Matt still are, very likely always will be. Days like these aren't a fair representation because nothing's really going to be coming between any of them, because they'll all be fine when Ben leaves. The arguments don't matter, really aren't even arguments in the scheme of things, but Ben really has to wonder what the fuck it was that Matt was thinking when he insisted he come here, especially when he _had_ to've known what to expect. They've had no secrets about it. This is just what happens every time he and Brad are thrown together. Matt should've known._ _

__And then again, he thinks, suddenly: maybe he _did_ know. _ _

__Brad raises his eyebrows, mock-impatient in that sprawl that on practically anyone else would just look ridiculous. Ben pulls off his shirt, and he closes the door._ _

__He's always assumed that Matt's just pissed because he knows what Ben'll get up to with Brad; he assumed he's pissed that Ben can barely stand the guy but he'll fuck him anyway. They've talked about it more than once because Matt can't understand how Ben can bear to be around someone he clearly dislikes and who dislikes him in return, and apparently never likes the reply he gets. Ben guesses he wants to hear something more meaningful than _he's just good in bed_. _ _

__Brad smiles that fucking arrogant smile and Ben bats at his thigh as he joins him on the bed. He's starting to think that Matt understands more of this than he's given him credit for._ _

__He misses what he had with Matt all those years ago, but he knows they can't go back. He's not even sure he'd want to, either, not knowing how it'd be, knowing how Matt feels about it, knowing all the fucking feelings there are caught up in them being together that way. It's fun with Brad because there's never any real expectation; it's sex, and it'll never be anything more. It's safe. It's sarcasm and Diet Coke, egotism and the perfect fucking distraction. He's barely thought about Jen or the breakup in three whole days. Maybe _that_ 's why he's here. _ _

__Brad pulls him down, mutters something about love handles that makes Ben snort. He'll talk to Matt in the morning, before he leaves. He should thank him for this._ _


End file.
